


Partnership

by suzannahbee123



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Implied Smut, Mentions of Sex, Miscarriage, Swear Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 10:46:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzannahbee123/pseuds/suzannahbee123
Summary: Natasha Romaov's and Steve Rogers relationship grows into more than just a work partnership after the events of Civil War and start to find happiness together. Thanos changes everything.





	Partnership

**Author's Note:**

> There is a scene of a miscarriage in this so please read with caution.

Natasha Romanoff had always liked Steve. The second she had laid eyes on him on the Heli carrier, all those years ago, something inside of her had sat up and taken notice but she had been well trained to keep any actual lust on her part very, _very_ separate. Besides, she was an agent of SHIELD. Natasha didn’t have time for anything that would get between her and the mission.

Years passed and they became a very effective team, they fought and had disagreements but that was only to be expected. Natasha made sure that her opinion was always heard and Steve was never the type to give out orders that he, himself, wouldn’t follow and if someone disagreed with the orders? Steve listened. Sometimes.

Then Berlin had happened. Bucky Barnes had happened.

After that, everything changed and Natasha had hated Steve with an intensity that shocked her when she let herself look at the emotion too closely. What had been a dysfunctional, argumentative and sometimes violent family, was now in ruins and all because Steve just wanted to save his friend.

Natasha loved him for that, too.

***

It took a year for Natasha to be found by Steve and the rest of their team. Natasha had cut off her hair, bleached it to the point of it almost cracking off in her hands but still, SHIELD, CIA, FBI and other organisations with very creative initials were always hot on her tail. Natasha was getting of tired of running, but she couldn’t give up. No one was going to put her in a box again.

One evening in Moscow and she had finally been cornered, leaving her to take out the five guys they had sent after her. It had been touch and go, at least until Steve had shown up, completely out of the blue, and helped her with the last guy.

“It took you long enough, Cap.”

“Well, I thought you could handle it. Aren’t you glad I came along, after all?”

Nat smirked at the quip, striking out at the last man standing and knocking him clean out. “I think I had it covered.”

Steve should’ve been smiling at her retort. That’s what they did. Quips and remarks and some sass and snark for when they were in a good mood. Steve, instead, looked horrified and held her because her legs were giving out. Natasha looked down and huffed in annoyance at the blood on her shirt. “God damn it. Not again.”

Natasha was more annoyed about another article of clothing being ruined by a gunshot wound then the actual gunshot wound. The last thing she felt was Steve’s arms around her as he picked her up and took her away from the violence she had caused.

***

“Did you love Bruce?”

Natasha looked up in shock at Steve. “I’m sorry?”

“Banner. Bruce! Uh, did you… I mean, you were pretty cut up with him gone. I thought-”

Hanging her head, shame and just a small amount of guilt weighing it down so she couldn’t meet his eyes over the map they were studying, Natasha whispered, “No. I really liked him, as a friend, anyway, but… well, the big guy liked me and responded to me, so Fury asked that I keep close to him… keep him calm.”

Steve’s gaze bore into her like red hot drills. It had been two months since he had helped her and they had been together as a team again. Sam was with them and Wanda and Vision kept in contact. Things had been, almost, normal again. Until now.

Natasha didn’t know what had caused this but she wouldn’t lie about it either.

“You lied to Bruce? Fury asked you to do that?!”

Slowly, Natasha raised her eyes to Steve’s ocean blue ones, currently dark and stormy with clearly withheld anger. “Bruce knew. He never said but he _knew_ , Steve. Hulk wasn’t inherently bad with me, there was always some element of Bruce in him and, I think, Bruce liked knowing that there was one person that Hulk didn’t want to hurt immediately. I know it doesn’t make it better.”

Steve just looked at the map, jaw muscle twitching and fists clenched against the paper, causing South America to get scrunched up in his palm.

“Steve, I want you to know, I never would’ve seduced him… like that. I- I don’t do that anymore and-” Natasha’s breath left her in a rush when Steve gently took her hand in his, never once breaking their eye contact.

“I know that.”

“You do?”

Steve nodded. “I am livid Fury asked _you_ to do that. You’re a good person, Nat.”

Outside, Natasha remained stoic, a slight head tilt was all the acknowledgement she gave to Steve. Inside though? Natasha smiled like she hadn’t since before she could remember.

***

The first time had been an accident.

Well, it _hadn’t_ , not in the sense that Natasha had accidently fallen, conveniently naked and with perfectly splayed legs, onto the crappy single bed in the worse hotel. It _hadn’t_ been an accident that had caused Steve to fall onto her, gloriously naked and perfectly aligned in between her welcoming limbs. Steve’s hips _hadn’t_ been overcome with a strange twitch that meant his dick had thrust into her pussy and kept on going until they were both spent and panting and unable to stop touching each other. Like, now that they had finally given into the feelings that had been there from (almost) day one, they couldn’t let go for fear it would disappear.

It had been an accident because feeling _weren’t_ supposed to get involved. At least, not yet.

Six months had passed since they had talked about Bruce, in that time the three of them, Steve, Sam and Natasha had travelled together, trained together and, even though they all mourned the loss of the other members of their little unit, they were fairly…happy.

Then, there were those days though that Natasha and Sam hated. The days when they would wake up in the crappy hostels or motels and Steve wasn’t there and he wouldn’t come back for at least a week. They both knew he was off to see Barnes, to recharge his batteries, so to speak.

Steve would come back looking like he had been at the finest health spa and Natasha would have to bite her tongue from asking if he knew what the hell he was playing at. If he knew what separating himself from the group could mean. She never did though.

This time, however, he had come back and he looked awful. All Steve had said was, “He was having a bad day. It’s to be expected.”

So they had drank cheap vodka and rum, and the three of them had carefully avoided talking about Barnes and how he _wasn’t_ going to have good days all the time. How, in fact, Barnes was lucky to have a good day at all, with everything that had happened.

Sam had gone to bed, the cheap crap they were drinking was obviously too much for him. Natasha scoffed to herself, it was swill and tasted like garbage water, but, it was all they could afford and she wasn’t about to waste it.

“I’m sorry about Barnes.” Natasha broke her vow of silence about the subject. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“What else can you say? It’s fine, he’s where he needs to be in order to heal.”

Steve’s words sounded sincere enough but Natasha was a master at reading people, she always knew when something was up. “And you? Where do you need to be?”

Steve’s blue eyes locked with her green ones and Natasha again felt that pull, like the same one that she had felt on that Heli carrier all those years ago. “I think I _am_ right where I need to be.”

Natasha was kissing Steve and he was kissing back… it hadn’t been planned. It hadn’t been an accident either. It just happened.

***

Another month later, another round of passionate and desperate sex after Sam had turned in for the night. Natasha was adoring the feeling of being so wantonly adored, so desperately needed, so incredibly wanted, and not a single time when Steve came to her did he ever make her feel like this was some grand seduction, or like she was some temptress that he just couldn’t stay away from.

The feelings that they both were in unspoken agreement to not talk about or acknowledge, at least not yet, were always there, bubbling under the surface. Natasha would bring them up, when she was ready. When she felt Steve was ready. Right now, it was still new and anything could change.

Their lives were far from perfect right now. Just once, she wanted to keep something for herself and keep it as pure as possible. Natasha looked up at Steve, the moonlight fell across his sleeping face, highlighting the beard that had grown in and the longer hair that had fallen across his forehead. He looked so beautiful like this, peaceful and calm and not full of the simmering anger that she could feel from him more and more often.

The separation from the rest of the team, the rest of the world, was taking its toll on him. Natasha liked being able to give him some peace.

“It’s rude to stare when people are asleep.” Steve smiled but didn’t open his eyes.

“It’s more rude to be so pretty when you’re asleep.”

Finally, he opened those sea blue eyes and they just stared at each other, aware that there was more than just lust in their gazes and aware that they weren’t ready to talk about it.

Steve’s hands went to her hips and lifted her easily, placing her on his lap and he brought her head down to his, capturing her lips in a kiss that took no time to go from soft to passionate and desperate again.

They didn’t even stop when Sam pounded on the wall separating their rooms, yelling at them to keep it down and begging them to let him have some sleep for one damn night, they just laughed softly into their kiss.

***

Something was coming. They could all feel it. When the news broke about an alien attack on New York and Tony going up in the space ship, presumably to fight the enemy at the source, Steve had gone from the soft and loving man that was now Natasha’s lover and he was now back to being like his old alter ego. The star and the shield may have gone but Steve would still do what was right, no matter what.

Natasha hated that about him.

The geared up to go to Scotland, to get Wanda and Vision and the jet was filled with all that was being unsaid. Steve knew that Natasha wasn’t talking about something. Natasha knew that he knew, but she also knew that she didn’t want him to know anything. Not yet. It wasn’t possible anyway, she had to be wrong.

Their nights and days together, making unhurried and sensual love, furiously fucking against every available surface or quickly pushing aside various fabrics in order to have fast sex… there was one thing that Natasha honestly hadn’t expected to have to deal with. She had been told that this one thing was never going to be a “problem” for her again.

Well, either her handlers in the Red Room had lied or Steve was capable of _so_ much more than he realised.

So they recused Wanda and Vision and Natasha had thrown herself into that fight, livid that now, at this point, was when something like this would happen. If it had happened at all, the symptoms could be from anything, right?

Natasha couldn’t think straight, the fight was the only thing that had cleared her head in weeks and that scared her because… what if? What if her suspicions were right and-

“Now, I thought we had a deal?” Natasha spat at Wanda, trying to drown out her thoughts, “Stay close, check in. Don’t take any chances.”

_Hypocrite. You took a chance on Steve and now look._

“I’m sorry. We just wanted some time.”

_You’re out of that, now. Make a decision. Find out and tell him, or find out and don’t… either way, you’ll risk losing him._

The began to take of to a destination Natasha hadn’t listened to. Pretending not to notice as Steve tracked where she was going, Natasha made her way to the cockpit to help Sam fly the jet.

_There’s a lot going on right now. I just need a few days to figure things out._

***

“Are you okay? You’ve been avoiding me.” Steve grabbed her upper arm before they left for the battlefield in Wakanda.

“Seriously? This isn’t the time, Steve.”

“I can’t have you fighting with your mind only half concentrating on the fight, Nat! I need you in this or out of it. If I think you’re wavering then _I_ can’t concentrate and I _need_ to! This is the big fight, we are atoning for everything that happened before and-”

“It’s not _me_ that needed to atone for before, Steve. Or for any _lives_ lost.” Natasha hadn’t meant deaths and the way that Steve’s face had paled said that he knew it too. They both knew that she had meant Tony, who was currently fighting in space at this very moment.

“Glad to see you’re back on form.”

Natasha watched his broad back as he turned and walked away from her.

_It’s better this way._

Steve was almost at the door and Natasha couldn’t bear that look on his face. The one that said that he had thought better of her and what they had together. That neither of them had acknowledged it was almost an acknowledgement in itself.

“Steve!” Natasha ran to him and shut the door. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m stressed because I need to talk to you about something and I don’t know how to say it and… and I snapped.” Finishing awkwardly, Natasha kept up the eye contact, hoping that Steve would see she was sincere.

“After this.” Steve said after a moment, “When Thanos is gone… there’s a lot we need to talk about. I don’t want there to be anything hidden anymore, Nat.”

“After this.” Natasha vowed.

***

The rocks that had held her down disappeared. A moment later and a heart wrenching scream followed. Natasha knew that the worst was about to happen but she was disoriented and her head only chanted Steve’s name… she needed to tell him… what he could do… how he healed her in so many ways…

Thor cam down, Stormbreaker leading the way and Natasha fell back to the floor after trying to stand up, hope burning in her chest as Stormbreaker landed squarely in Thanos’s chest. Everything would be fine now. The possible life growing within her was something Natasha had never even tried to hope for. They had made her sterile… taken away that option from her like it was _theirs_ to take. Like turning her into an assassin and femme fatale hadn’t been bad enough, they had to take the chance to bring better life into the world, as well.

Steve and her, they had never used protection, Steve was clean thanks to his serum infused body and, well, things like STD’s were treated mercilessly in the Red Room and since then, Natasha hadn’t been with anyone. And they had told her that she could no longer get pregnant…

Steve had changed all that. The serum had made the term “immortal” mean so much more.

Thanos stirred and Natasha looked to Steve in desperation, but before she could say anything, Thanos’s fingers snapped and Thanos was gone.

“Steve?”

Bucky was the first, Natasha saw it and screamed internally, though she was mute on the outside. Horror numbed her. Bucky Barnes who had been smiling and fought like a warrior, now, dust.

Her legs were rooted to the spot, she couldn’t even comfort Steve who couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. Natasha stumbled back a couple of steps, out of his line of sight. Just barely, she saw Sam go, too.

“Sam.” It was a whisper, a plea, but no one heard her.

Turning her head in the other direction, Natasha then saw Wanda almost look relieved as she was taken, as well. “No…”

The worst happened next though. Natasha expected herself to go, after everything that had happened, that she had done… Natasha thought that it was only fair she should go too. She didn’t want to leave Steve alone, but, better her than him.

Her legs gave out and she cried when her suspicions were suddenly proved in the worst way possible. It wasn’t even agony… just a tickle, almost.

Natasha watched helplessly as the dust rose from her abdomen, the fragile and impossible life that she had been carrying, gone. Two seconds was all it had taken and now, Natasha was back to what she had been before. Empty.

All she could do was hold her stomach as she pushed herself back up to a standing position. Force herself to walk to where Steve lay and Thor, Rhodey and Banner now stood in stunned silence.

“Oh God.”

Steve could never know what had happened to their baby. It wasn’t fair to make him carry that knowledge, so Natasha would carry it for them.

Natasha loved Steve. It was only fair and that’s what a real partnership was about.


End file.
